Statement of the Indigenous Peoples of Oaxaca
oaxaco - 12.12.2006 07:05
JOINT STATEMENT OF THE INDIGENOUS PEOPLES AND CIVIL SOCIETY OF OAXACA
Thursday, November 30, 2006
Forum of Indigenous Peoples of Oaxaca
NOTE:: you can hear the spanish audios of this forum here:
 http://radio.indymedia.org/news/2006/12/16167.php
http://radio.indymedia.org/news/2006/12/16147.php
http://radio.indymedia.org/news/2006/12/16140.php
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The municipal and communal authorities, communal and regional organizations, citizens from the Zapotec, Mixteco, Chinanteco, Chatino, Mazateco, Mixe, Huave, Cuicateco, Chontal, Zoque, Triqui, Amuzgo, Chocholteco and Tacuate Peoples, as well as civil organizations gathered within the framework of the Forum of Indigenous Peoples of Oaxaca, Oaxaca, on November 28 and 29 of the year 2006, after reflecting on the demands and life aspirations of our indigenous Peoples, as well as the delicate situation of aggression and repression suffered by our state, wish to declare the following:
I. Diagnoses and proposals
Oaxaca is a profoundly multiethnic and multicultural society, This fact is based on the active and living presence of our 16 indigenous Peoples. As Peoples, we are the bearers of great human, natural and cultural richness. Paradoxically, our Peoples live in a context of permanent aggression against our processes of autonomy and self-government; towards our lands, territories and natural resources; towards our diverse identities and cultures; towards our most basic and fundamental individual and collective rights.
Free determination and autonomy
Autonomy, that translates into our tongues as "what the People decide" i, is an indispensable condition for the true development of our communities. The right of our indigenous Peoples to a factual autonomy becomes realized in our right to be how we want to be and to freely decide our own future. It is a right that is practised in our municipalities and municipal agencies, but in a limited fashion, confronting governmental policies, regional tyrants, government delegations and the control of development resources, situations that must be transcended so that a full practise of autonomy can become possible. Our traditional customs have been manipulated by the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), in favor of the state governments, and the resources and mechanisms for representation are manipulated creating division within the communities, weakening community customs with individualism Also, the violence and marginalization against women is an expression of inequity within our own communities, and it is something that must change. We are conscious of the fact that we will transcend the current situation to build a new government from an indigenous root, with and agenda that will again take up traditional education, languages and medicine, with new forms of organization, strengthening the assemblies and with profound reforms in the judicial and institutional structures of the State.
Land, territories and resources
The lands, territories and resources are the spaces where our people live, settle and sustain themselves. They encompass, from the physical point of view, the soils, forests, coasts, water and all the natural resources that are utilized, preserved, defended and developed communally, as well as buildings, archaeological areas, and ceremonial and sacred sites. The main threat against our lands, territories and resources is the broad privatization process impulsed by the current laws and public policies that turn them into merchandise, their main interest is in the biodiversity, the minerals and the geographic location of our territories, particularly the Oaxacan Isthmus. The government's policies have led to an abandonment of the production of corn, which sustains the lives of our Peoples; it attacks our communal lives and social relations, and daily expels more and more of our brothers and sisters to the cities and other countries. It is, in summary, a war against our forms of life that we must learn to resist and overcome in a long term perspective.
We must male progress towards the recovery of our forms of organization through assemblies, tequio, community services and community cargos. We must strengthen our productive autonomy and defend our communal lands, territories and natural resources. We must also make progress towards the exchange of experiences and abilities, mutual support and joint action at a regional level, for it is necessary for the defense of our lands, territories and resources.
Intercultural Indigenous Education and Communication
Education has become a new form of colonization, and the schools and teachers have frequently been distant from the communities where they work. The importance of indigenous languages as a vehicle for our identities and the reproduction of our cultures is not yet acknowledged, and an intercultural and indigenous education is still a budding and distorted reality.
There is no indigenous education project that responds to the needs of the communities, expressed in a State public policy that will strengthen the identity of our cultures. It is vitally important to develop an intercultural indigenous form of education that will strengthen the autonomy of the communities. It is also necessary for intercultural education to become a reality in the educational system as a whole, particularly for mestizo schools in Oaxaca.
The community media have been an important tool for the sharing of our word, to get to know each other and unite our realities, problems and needs. This movement cannot be understood without the role played by the community radio stations in the city and regions, and this is why we need to demand these communication spaces as a basic right, and full respect for them.
Human Rights Violations
In Oaxaca the violation of human rights has worsened during the last decade. The indigenous peoples have suffered the systematic violation of our individual and communal rights.
Far from responding to the needs that afflict our indigenous peoples, the Federal and State governments respond to a Neoliberal system that intends to privatize our lands and natural resources, ignoring our indigenous rights, repressing us, jailing us, isolating us, torturing us and even assassinating us; harassing and raping our women.
During the last months the rights to free expression, petition, association, freedom and life have been flagrantly violates, even more when the Peoples defend ourselves and struggle through reason, words and peaceful mobilizations to achieve full respect.
In the face of this we propose the circulation and broadcasting, respect and practice of indigenous rights established in the ITO Agreement 169, the San Andres Agreements and other legislation. To achieve this we must have a Constitutional reform that fully and integrally acknowledges the indigenous rights consecrated in the San Andres agreements and the proposal of the COCOPA, and the urgent revocation of the laws and norms that have been created recently and that go against the indigenous communities, such as the indigenous reform of the year 2001 and the Ley Televisa, for they prevent the exercise of the Peoples' right to free determination and autonomy.
II. Statement
We reassert our conviction that there will be no governability, democracy, justice and peace in Oaxaca as long as Mr. Ulises Ruiz Ortiz remains in office. For this reason we urge the Senate of the Republic and the competent authorities to proceed to his immediate destitution through the corresponding political and legal routes. Oaxaca can wait no more.
We declare our full repudiation to the acts of aggression and repression that the military, Federal, State and municipal police forces, together with armed civilians have unleashed against the society in a judicial and political persecution, criminalizing social protests and worsening human rights violations in our state.
We demand the live presentation of those who have been disappeared, the immediate liberation of all the detainees and the cancellation of the arrest warrants against all those who have participates in the Oaxaca popular movement and the general population. Simultaneously, we demand the cancellation of the illegal transmissions of the pro-government "citizen radio" because of its calls to hatred and violence against the citizens and Peoples of Oaxaca.
The presence of the Federal police forces in Oaxaca, particularly the Policía Federal Preventiva (Federal Preventive Police) has not guaranteed either safety or peace in our State; on the contrary, they have just worsened the conflict we are immersed in. Because of this, we demand the immediate departure of said federal forces and the immediate halt of the illegitimate and illegal actions of the Sate and municipal police forces and armed civilians.
We demand respect for the indigenous communication media, particularly the community radio stations that currently exist in the different indigenous towns of Oaxaca. We urge also the indigenous peoples of Oaxaca to establish their own communication media so that they can broadcast the problems, demands and life aspirations of the indigenous Peoples.
We ratify our inalienable spirit in favor of peaceful means to solve the conflict and we condemn violence as a method to solve the State`s political and social crisis. We reiterate that our struggle is for a profound, democratic and true transformation of Oaxaca for the good of all. Because of this, we must generate new political and judicial frameworks for a new social and economic model, so that Oaxaca can become an illuminating testimony for the changes that are also required in our country.
We appeal for the strengthening of a process of unity based on the diversity of identities and agendas, propitiating organic, programatic and joint action rapprochement between all the Peoples, sectors and movements.
We declare that we must impulse creative and positive attitudes and capabilities based on the richness, experience and wisdom of our indigenous peoples, for our cultures, our autonomy and organization processes, collective work, amongst other communal elements, constitute the keys for the construction of any social and political alternative.
We urge the society to build new initiatives and proposals based on connecting the mobilization, organization and dialogue in all the different fields of the life, work and struggle of our Peoples.
We call for the strengthening of the organizational and joint action process of the APPO; particularly energizing the grassroots of all movements and organizations based on this attitude; focused on what articulates, transforms and constructs from the roots..
To the brothers and sisters who walk beside us from the Popular Council of the Oaxacan Peoples' Popular Assembly, we say that today more than ever we must reassert our conviction and commitment for the construction of a peaceful movement that will attend to the profound causes of the conflict we are living, building the foundations for a new social pact and a new judicial order that will give us justice, peace and democracy for all.
We call the Oaxacan society, all its organizations, sectors and families, to participate in this great effort for change that we are all compelled to build through dialogue.
We also call the Federal Government and the political parties to respect and back this Oaxacan process, that shall be new and enlightened, based on values, rights and proposals, and not the use of force. Finally, we call you to turn this conflict into our great opportunity for the transformation needed by Oaxaca and Mexico.
This profound and complex conflict, as painful as childbirth, has allowed for the full and authentic expression of the Peoples of Oaxaca. It has allowed us to see that in Oaxaca the demands and aspirations of society no longer have any correspondence with the current laws, institutions and authoritarian practices of the political regime. Also, the indigenous peoples of Oaxaca must understand things in the following manner: this movement has transformed us and we cannot go back to our prior situation. From the onward, based on our own, we must build the Oaxaca we want.
We openly pronounce ourselves for non violence. We are convinced that it is the best way to obtain political ends. As Gandhi said, it is the virtue of the strong. Only the weak must recur to violence. Because we are strong, we are a majority, we unreservedly commit ourselves to nonviolence.
We shall not fall into the polarized trap they are provoking. There is no dispute that cannot be solved through democratic dialogue.
The indigenous Peoples want the society and governments of Oaxaca, Mexico and the world to know that the enormous abuse of public force practice in the last days does not intimidate or paralyze us, as we have demonstrated by going ahead with this Forum.
We are worried, because what little remained of the rule of law, constantly violated by Ulises Ruiz, has now been destroyed by the federal government. We are under a n undeclared and, thus, illegal state of exception. This worries us and leads us to act with extreme care. But it will not detain us. Our road is set and we will continue walking down that path in our own way, in our own time and rhythm. This path includes the transformation of all the norms and institutions that currently govern our lives. We will not walk this road alone. But we will never again be excluded from the conception and operation of these norms and institutions.
Never more a Mexico without us.
For the respect of the free determination and the reconstitution of the indigenous peoples.
Oaxaca City, Oaxaca, on November 29, 2006
 Website: http://www.flickr.com/photos/oaxacostyle/
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